iOS Today 822 transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Rosemary Orchard [00:00:00]:
Coming up on iOS Today, I'm joined by Dan Moran as we look at retro apps in a blast from the past.

Dan Moren [00:00:09]:
Podcasts you love.

Rosemary Orchard [00:00:10]:
From people you trust.

Dan Moren [00:00:14]:
This is TWiT.

Rosemary Orchard [00:00:17]:
This is iOS Today, episode 822, recorded Tuesday, September 29th for Thursday, October 1st, 2026. Blast from the app past. Hello and welcome to iOS Today, where we talk all things iOS. iPadOS, tvOS, HomePodOS, and also HomeKit sometimes. My name is Rosemary Richards, and today I'm joined by the wonderful and fabulous Dan Moran.

Dan Moren [00:00:41]:
Hi, Rosemary. Good to be here as always. I know I'm keeping Micah's seat warm for him. I would, I would never try to replace him in some sort of devious plot. I mean, yes.

Rosemary Orchard [00:00:53]:
Well, I mean, we are coming up on Halloween, so I don't know, maybe we should, we should be having more fun and devious plots to do. Yes. Well, in the meantime, instead of bets and cobwebs, we have dusted the cobwebs off of the dark recesses of the App Store. And I don't mean dark in a nefarious sense. I mean those corners that you have forgotten about because Dan and I today are going to talk about apps from the past, those oldie but goodies that are still hanging out on our iPhones and iPads today. Remember, of course, the App Store wasn't even there when we first got the iPhone, which, you know, I have to say, I didn't get the first iPhone. Did you get the first iPhone?

Dan Moren [00:01:34]:
I stood in line for a first iPhone outside an AT&T store here in the US. And, um, it was very hot. It was like June or July because they used to come out in the summer. And I sat in the blazing hot sun for like 6 hours. It was terrible.

Rosemary Orchard [00:01:51]:
Oh, that does not sound like fun. Yeah, I did not get the first iPhone. Uh, this came out, uh, I want to say like I was in secondary school because I didn't get it. I got an iPod Touch because I didn't like have a phone on contract at the time, which which was prepaid over here, and it was a whole thing, and I didn't have the money. Um, so I bought an iPod Touch, and I absolutely loved that thing, and it was great. And I remember getting the App Store, and I remember downloading some apps which no longer exist, sadly. Toodaloo, uh, ToodleDoo, uh, which was my to-do app of choice because I couldn't afford OmniFocus at the time, because I was trying to do everything as low budget as possible. Uh, so OmniFocus, there we go, blast from the past.

Rosemary Orchard [00:02:33]:
But that is not one of the ones on our list today. And I think to start with, I am gonna have to throw out mention to one of the apps that I definitely am still using every single day. I've literally opened it about 17 times today, possibly because I have COVID and I can no longer remember what 2+ 2 is. But I'm still loving and using PeakCalc, which was a day one App Store app made by friend of the show James Thompson. It has changed a little bit over time. It's got significantly more features on iOS than it used to have because iOS is significantly more powerful. Than I think even the Macs were at the time when this came out. But, but honestly, this is, this is such a solid app.

Rosemary Orchard [00:03:14]:
It is. It's not on my home screen, but it's in my control center, which I would argue is better because it means that I can reach for it from everywhere to do whatever it is I need to do. And I mean, I most often open my apps with Siri search anyway. But yeah, every so often I even open it up on my Apple Watch just to check, you know, track the latest temp.

Dan Moren [00:03:34]:
Or, yeah, I mean, James, I know, you know, if we don't mention it, James, he gets, he gets very sad, you know, and I wouldn't want James to be sad by us not mentioning PCalc. I've also had PCalc since among the earliest days of the App Store. I used to just have the free version, but then James was really nice and gave me the paid version. So, uh, sorry, James, no money from me.

Rosemary Orchard [00:03:56]:
Uh, well, you know, PCalc has come a long way. It's still there on macOS. It's around on iOS. It's now on Apple Watch. It's on visionOS. It's on iPadOS. It was on iPadOS before there was calculator built into iPadOS, because for some reason that was a legal distinction that Apple had to make at some point, according to some theorists. But either way, it's, it's an oldie but a goodie, and it's a real goodie in the sense that it's very much been updated for its entire life on the App Store, uh, which, you know, is a, is a great start.

Rosemary Orchard [00:04:25]:
So yes, that, that is my very first pick that I'm talking about. Dan, do you have another pick?

Dan Moren [00:04:31]:
Yeah. One of the things that I really found handy about this wonderful technological age we live in is that it helps me keep track of things. There used to be a dashboard widget on macOS a million years ago that would help you keep track of TV shows that you watch, which ones were coming up, which episodes you'd already watched, et cetera. And I was delighted when that app made a jump to the iPhone as a full-fledged app. And I'm speaking of TV Forecast by Matt Comey. Matt also worked on a classic game called The Incident, which is highly recommended. it all. I think you can't get that anymore, sadly.

Dan Moren [00:05:06]:
Um, but, uh, uh, I loved TV Forecast. It was a, like, a revelation to me that instead of trying to, like, mentally remember what episode I was on, I could just look at a list and see, oh, I've watched the last 6 episodes of this, I'm due to watch the next one. Or even better, like, trying to figure out when a show came back. Like, in the olden days— I'm sorry, I'm gonna sound very old now— in the olden days, you had a thing called TV Guide, and you had to look up when shows were on, and it was so frustrating because you would forget or you'd miss shows. Um, yeah, TV Forecast's been around for a long time. I was trying to look up, I think it goes back to at least 2010, maybe, maybe earlier. Um, and it's still being updated. Matt's still working on it, and it's still a great way to track all of the shows that you watch.

Dan Moren [00:05:56]:
Um, it's not the one that I use most of the time now. I, I do also appreciate it does some movie stuff now. Um, it's got integration with, uh, Trakt, which is one of the popular services for syncing that information, the, uh, your data from different places. Um, and it's just a well-made app, you know, by an independent developer, which is always nice. It's not made by a big company or whatever. It's, you know, minimizes how much data is being used of yours, et cetera. And it's just super easy to use. So, uh, TV Forecast, like I said, I've been using this thing for— I, I can't even remember how long.

Dan Moren [00:06:29]:
Uh, it's got widgets for the home screen, even works, and it's got some stuff for standby, like Yeah, everything that you could want. So I'm, I'm delighted to see a good, a good app citizen here. And most of all, it means I don't miss any of my TV shows.

Rosemary Orchard [00:06:43]:
Well, that is important because I remember back in the day, uh, I don't think we actually got a TV Guide like magazine in our house. Uh, we— it used to be in the paper to an extent, but I remember going to my grandmother's house and like looking at like the— what have been on TV in the last week because she got it weekly.

Dan Moren [00:07:01]:
Insert on like Sunday, you got like a little like like really cheap pan— you know, newsprint stapled together thing that would, uh, tell you all the shows that were on. And I still remember the day I missed, after waiting months for the like Star Trek: The Next Generation episode because it was in syndication, I was like, I want to watch this one. And it was like I had to go out that day or something. I was so mad. It was like, oh, I have to wait for it to come all the way around again. It's gonna be like 2 years.

Rosemary Orchard [00:07:28]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also remember trying to get it over the holiday season and then figuring out which films you wanted to watch because they were all on at the same time. Obviously this This has been made a lot easier with streaming services, and one of the apps that you can use to find out more about these shows now than you ever could back in the days of an old TV guide is IMDb. I scrolled all the way back through my App Store purchase history to see when I first got this, and this was one of the first apps that I purchased, I've got to admit, because IMDb is honestly— it's still doing pretty well out there for information. There are various other apps that I do love to use for this, but IMDb is one of the longest-running ones where, you know, you can find out trivia about various shows, or you can see who was that actor in this and what other things were they in. You know, I've recently been on a bit of a Julia Roberts binge watch because I've been spending a lot of time recovering at home, as you might be able to tell from my voice. So, I've just been going through, and I watched Notting Hill yesterday, and it's like, oh, okay, what else should I watch? Runaway Bride. So, you know, I'm going through all of the classics here.

Rosemary Orchard [00:08:32]:
Tonight's Four Weddings and a Funeral, for anyone who's curious. curious. But it's great to be able to see what goofs did they make, what factual inaccuracies are there, and so on and so forth, especially if you're watching something that is, you know, historical fiction. So, for example, I watched The Six Triple Eight the other day, and that was really good. And being able to look up all the information about that afterwards, certainly a lot easier than, uh, you know, having to try and, you know, Google something and hope that somebody might have written something in an internet forum somewhere, which, you know, Before IMDb existed, it was all just people sitting in internet forums talking to each other.

Dan Moren [00:09:04]:
So, yeah, aren't all those Julia Roberts rom-coms now historical movies as well?

Rosemary Orchard [00:09:11]:
They're like, gosh, 25 years old.

Dan Moren [00:09:14]:
I'm very— don't worry, Rosemary, however old you get, I'll always be much older. Don't worry about it.

Rosemary Orchard [00:09:20]:
No, it's one of these things. Notting Hill came out in 1999, I discovered yesterday, uh, and it was, it was one of those things that I was like, oh gosh. That this was a period of time ago. Uh, so yeah, that, that was a whole thing. But anyway, that's IMDb. Maybe we should, uh, you know, make things slightly more current with some news.

Dan Moren [00:09:41]:
Yeah, that's a great choice. Um, look, when I started writing about the iPhone, I'd already been a blogger and a, you know, contributor to Macworld for a year or so. And one of the things that was crucial to me was having a good RSS reader because that's how I got all my news. I would subscribe to all these sites. and get updates. And it was just the best way to sort of digest all that information. And on the Mac, I always trusted my standby there was NetNewsWire. And I was thrilled when they came out immediately with an iOS version as well.

Dan Moren [00:10:14]:
And I'm even more thrilled that that app has somehow persisted all the way until today. It's still run by Brent Simmons, who has been— who created NetNewsWire way back in the day. Sorry, Brent. Um, but it still does all the great things that Newswire has always done in terms of delivering your feeds, letting you organize them in the way that you want. Um, it's also been updated a lot and it's, it's open source now as well. And so it's totally free. Um, but it's just a, like, really simple kind of like standard iOS-style, uh, newsreader. It doesn't do things I think that are like really Um, you know, out of the pale in terms of like trying to make it look really different or things like that.

Dan Moren [00:10:59]:
It's just like, kind of like, here's the news, here's your feeds. Like if you want some information about like which news or which news came today or which stuff that you've saved for like later reading, it's got, you know, a starred list and all that. It syncs via iCloud. It's very, it's simple and straightforward, but it's also really elegant in its simplicity. And that's the thing that I've always appreciated about NetNewsWire is it really gets the job done and it gets out of your way and just make sure that like what you're, what you're doing is reading your news. and nothing interferes with that. So I've always been really impressed with NetNewsWire, and I'm, I'm super glad that it stuck around, um, you know, this almost 20 years.

Rosemary Orchard [00:11:38]:
Yes, yes, so am I. And it's one of these things where the recent feature addition— I say recent, relatively recent in the entire history of NetNewsWire— addition of iCloud syncing. So you don't even need to have an account with a third party, uh, such as Feedbin or something to connect to that. I mean, you can, and then you get all the cool automations online with if this and that and so on and so forth if you want those. Or you can just use iCloud. And honestly, it works really well. So yeah, that's— yeah, I use NetNewsWire. I was using it to help prep for this show because that's how I check my news before I record.

Rosemary Orchard [00:12:12]:
So yes, that— yeah, great choice there, Dan.

Dan Moren [00:12:15]:
Thank you.

Rosemary Orchard [00:12:16]:
My next choice is one that I don't quite reach for as frequently anymore. But I think having done the prep for this episode, I'm going to be trying to put it a little bit more front and center of my mind, at least, is Wikipanion. So Wikipanion is a Wikipedia app for your iPhone. That's it. It's as basic as it sounds, but it does just mean that you, instead of perhaps opening Google or DuckDuckGo and maybe getting an AI summary at the top, which may or may not have factual inaccuracies in it, you can instead open up up Wikipedia, search for the thing that you're looking for, and then you will of course get Wikipedia-verified content. I say Wikipedia-verified content— the way Wikipedia works is anybody can go in and edit something, uh, and then somebody else can go in and go, that's not right, and hit revert and get rid of it. So, you know, there is still the potential, uh, for error there. Nothing out there is perfect, of course.

Rosemary Orchard [00:13:12]:
You could get errors in a printed copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica if you look hard enough. Uh, it's a lot of those people have extra editorial people looking over their shoulder and going, there's 2 spaces after this full stop and there should only be one, um, and so on. But yes, Wikipedia is one of those places where it is really useful to get a bunch of information, especially if you're trying to build a source list, because you can go down to the bottom and see where all these people got their sources from and then continue hopefully that same thread, uh, or same process on all the other websites you're looking for to at more and more sources. That's certainly one of the things I found as a useful place to expand the sources that I was using when I had to write my dissertations at university, because it's really useful to go, ah, what have— what things have other people looked at here? Ah, and then this person looked at this, and then 17 hours in the library later, you go, I'm the Hunchback of Notre Dame now. My spine is curved, but I've got a really, really good place to get started doing a bit more research. So that's—

Dan Moren [00:14:13]:
I remember the times when Wikipedia, like, the teachers would be all upset for using Wikipedia as like a source for things. And nowadays it feels like the gold standard, honestly.

Rosemary Orchard [00:14:21]:
Well, I was never allowed to use Wikipedia as a source itself, but they recommended using it to get a good overview of a new topic for understanding and then getting it to find resources that you could actually use and trust. Because of course, the same problem with Wikipedia exists now, has always existed. It's somebody edits it and then You know, anybody can come along and, and change that. But whether or not it is verified as true kind of depends on how good the volunteers are. And that's one of the things they do fundraising for every year.

Dan Moren [00:14:52]:
All right. I'm going to move on to the next app, which is an app that I don't use all the time, but I do find myself coming back to more often than not, which is Lose It. There's a ton of these apps out there which are like calorie counters and ways to help you lose weight or eat better. And I confess I'm not always the best at these things, but it is something that I find myself every once in a while and getting into that zone where it's like, you know what, I'm going to be better about the stuff that I'm eating. I work at home, you know, I make my own lunch. I make— I eat most of my meals at home, honestly. And so it does make it a little easier for these kinds of things. I've always appreciated Lose It.

Dan Moren [00:15:25]:
It's been around for a super long time. A lot of the features that it has, the sort of the basic level stuff that I use is all included in the basic version. You don't need to necessarily upgrade. to the paid version to get away with like, okay, I just want to log like what I'm eating and what the calorie counts are, etc. I don't need the ability to like take a photo of my meal and figure out what everything in there is. But it's just I find that it's pretty reliable. It helps me as a motivational framework in the times when I do want to keep better track of it by just making it really easy to do it. And I think it's got a pretty solid interface, so I've been using it.

Dan Moren [00:16:07]:
again, on and off for many, many years. Um, there are of course plenty of other apps that do sort of similar things, but I think Lose It has a degree of, uh, simplicity in its interface and elegance in its interface. It works with the Apple Watch, it integrates with Apple Health. It can even, if you've got like a Fitbit account or something like that, or a step tracker, it can, it can pull that information too and do sort of the automatic like, hey, you did this much amount of, uh, you know, exercise in a day. It's got a barcode scanner, which is the thing I always loved. If you're like eating something, um, and it's like, well, rather than searching through, I want to find the exact like nutritional thing in the database, you can scan the barcode with the camera and it will look it up and see if it's in there. And if it's not, you can actually create it too, which is really nice. So this is one of those things that may not be like totally critical for you, but I think that it's just if you need this as an option, it's— or want to have this as an option, it's great.

Dan Moren [00:17:00]:
It also has a— as I recall, there is like a, like a social media aspect to it, not like a post or whatever. But like, if you have friends and you're like trying to keep each other like motivated and accountable, I think it has like a thing where you can kind of keep track of like what you're doing and share that progress with other people, which can be really helpful in terms of making sure that you sort of stay on task. And just in general, it's, it's been around long enough that I do kind of trust it at this point. So it's, uh, the thing I turn to when I'm looking for the features that it offers.

Rosemary Orchard [00:17:31]:
That's very cool. Yes, I have used Lose It in the past and I did greatly enjoy it as an app. And it's, I think it's one of the better choices out there for sure.

Dan Moren [00:17:39]:
Agreed. Yeah, it doesn't feel as junky.

Rosemary Orchard [00:17:41]:
No, no, that's just it. Also not necessarily doing as weird things with your data as MyFitnessPal, for example. Phew. There was a whole thing with them at one point. But either way, moving on to something that's definitely also health related. iFirstAid. I genuinely forgot that I had originally had this app on my iPhone and it was one of the first things I downloaded. I had it on my iPod Touch.

Rosemary Orchard [00:18:03]:
Touch. And this app works offline. It still works now. Uh, it's been updated. It looks really good on my iPhone 18 Pro. I have yet to try on an iPhone Duo. That will be coming in the next month or so. Uh, we'll have to see if they have time to update it for that.

Rosemary Orchard [00:18:18]:
But this app works offline. So once you, uh, download it, please, uh, if you are gonna download it to keep the information offline, actually open up the app and go through and set it up and say like, hey, I speak English, I'm in the UK, for example. That's what I had to do. Uh, I also appreciate the fact that they used an Australian flag to represent English instead of the standard American flag that a lot of places use. That was a nice touch just to be like, oh, yay, doesn't have to be an American flag because the UK flag's kind of in the Australian flags. But yes, so you do that and then it downloads a bunch of data offline to walk you through how do you handle somebody who is choking, somebody who is struggling with their asthma, maybe it's not properly under control, somebody who has a nosebleed, somebody with a fracture, things like that. Now, obviously, this is one of those apps that you have and you hope to never need and never use, because that is what would happen in an absolutely ideal world. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world, and this can be really useful as a prompt to help walk you through what you should be doing.

Rosemary Orchard [00:19:21]:
I would recommend, if you are in a situation where you need this, also do the thing where you explicitly point at a person and say, you call the emergency services, or tell them to dial whatever the number is. But say you, don't say can someone, because can someone, everyone else assumes that somebody else is going to do it and it doesn't get done. Pick a person. Pick your trusted participant volunteer and voluntold them to do the thing that you need them to do. Similar, if you need somebody to get ice, don't just say, can somebody get some ice? Say, go get some ice. Things like that. But yeah, this is a really useful app to have. I hope nobody here ever needs it, but just in case you do, it's really good.

Rosemary Orchard [00:20:01]:
And of course, always listen to any advice that the emergency services are able to give you with regards to whatever is going on, because obviously they are actually trained medical professionals. probably know better than just an app who is just giving you information based on the information you've given it. And, you know, we don't know everything. But yes, iFirstAid, it's a great app. It's also free to download. It does have some ads in there for things that they recommend that you can purchase, like first aid kits and so on. But if you don't need those, then you can just use the app for free.

Dan Moren [00:20:36]:
I'm going to segue into that from an app that I think is from a similar era, if only because it also starts with I, because there's There was a time where every app needed to start with I, like the iPhone. And so we had iFirst Aid, and now we move directly to iExit. I actually found myself reaching for iExit recently when I was on a car trip with my family and I wanted to figure out where the next rest stop was. And it turns out that though we have many of these modern mapping applications like Google Maps and Apple Maps, none of them are good at this. Uh, and so I turned to iExit, which has been around forever. And to poke a little loving fun at iExit, looks almost the same as it did when it came out in like 2008.

Rosemary Orchard [00:21:20]:
Wow.

Dan Moren [00:21:21]:
But it's hard to argue with the fact that it has the information that you need, which is, I'm going to get off at this exit, what is here? Or when is the next rest stop on this road that I am on right now? Again, it boggles my mind that this was a real problem trying to figure this out. I was driving the New Jersey Turnpike, I think, and we were trying to figure out where to stop for lunch. And so having something like iExit where you can just quickly look that up. They've updated it over the years, um, and, and have a bunch of other information in there. So it integrates with like— it tells you like lodging and stuff like that, and it does fuel prices, but it also now does EV charging as well and helps you figure out like where you can charge your car and what the chargers are available, etc. Um, it helps you find specific like restaurants or hotels, uh, if you're looking for a particular like brand or something like that. Helps you find even places where you can go camping or shopping, or if you need medical assistance because your iFirstAid app doesn't cut it anymore, it's got all that information. And it can just tell it to you in a very simple place, like, that's sort of geographically organized.

Dan Moren [00:22:24]:
Like, hey, I'm getting off at this exit. What are the things around this exit? It can tell you, like, what's the next stop on the road? All of this stuff. It's got CarPlay integration. So if you're using it in your car, you can look that up right there. Um, I think this is just a great app, uh, for having this information at your fingertips and being organized in a way that is the most useful for when you're on the car trip and you're in the car and you're trying to figure out like, oh my God, everybody's hungry and cranky, like where can we stop? And rather than going through like, through what Google Maps says, there's this is here, but this is, it's closed. Yelp says this is here. Like it just collects all the information in one place. So I find that extremely useful when taking a car trip.

Rosemary Orchard [00:23:02]:
That's a really smart move, Dan. And I've just had a quick look and I'm now gonna have to explore a bunch of UK ones because is, uh, we have service stations along our motorways.

Dan Moren [00:23:10]:
I know, yeah.

Rosemary Orchard [00:23:11]:
Uh, but, uh, I, I never know when the next one's gonna be. And, uh, I definitely had to run to get to the bathroom when I got to the airport recently because I miscalculated where the services were in relation to the airport and thought that they were before and they were not.

Dan Moren [00:23:27]:
The maps lie. The maps lie or don't tell you. It's really disappointing. But I'm glad that this app kills that.

Rosemary Orchard [00:23:32]:
Yeah, I miscalculated the mileage in my head and I was completely wrong. So that, that was on me. But now I've found an app, so hopefully the app can help me, and hopefully it's got CarPlay support. So I'll let you folks know once I've actually tested that out, uh, in, in my car at some point. So my next app, uh, it's no longer quite in its original incarnation. It, like a phoenix, rose from the ashes of the original era of iPhone games, only it was quite angry about it, as birds are wont to do if somebody tries to bury them. Uh, this is Red's First Flight. It was originally Angry Birds, and it is the original Angry Birds.

Rosemary Orchard [00:24:09]:
The original Angry Birds is no longer on the App Store. It's Angry Birds 2 and so on and so forth. But Red's First Flight is still on the App Store. And yeah, if you wanna throw bird at some pigs, it's a good—

Dan Moren [00:24:23]:
Yeah.

Rosemary Orchard [00:24:24]:
I don't really know how to describe the game other than pigs have built houses out of wooden structures. The birds are angry about it. So you fire the birds out of a catapult at the pig's house, and your job is to try and collapse the house as best as you can. Honestly, it's one of these things where if you haven't played Angry Birds before, you should download it I think you should definitely give it a try. This is $0.99, no ads, no in-app purchases. That's it. And just go for it. It's a fun game, honestly.

Rosemary Orchard [00:24:50]:
That and Fruit Ninja, which is now in Apple Arcade and also on the Oculus Quest, are like the original classics that I absolutely loved playing.

Dan Moren [00:24:59]:
Angry Robots might— or Angry Birds might have been the first example of like an iOS iPhone phenomenon that spawned— because there was like a movie, wasn't there? Like, didn't it like turn into— like, it was a whole thing. I mean, I, I think that was wild. It was like the first thing where, you know, the phone spawned a franchise essentially, because things— it was so popular. Um, wild. I never really— I played it a little bit. I was never super into Angry Birds, but, um, yeah, but I, I mean, I'm conversant with it. I understand that the birds are irate.

Rosemary Orchard [00:25:35]:
I remember playing it on my iPad, on the original iPad, um, and, uh, really enjoying the big screen for that. It— I used the big screen on my iPad for that, Fruit Ninja, and also, uh, like dictionaries and thesauruses and grammar books in my language classes. So there was a little bit of extremes going on there, but you know, all work and no play, it makes an iPad very, very sad.

Dan Moren [00:25:58]:
Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned words though, because that's a good, that's a good segue into my, my last pick here. Um, I think when the iPhone came out, the novelty of having all this stuff in your pocket, right? Like, you know, the iPod brought us 1,000 songs in your pocket, but all of a sudden the iPhone was like the internet in your pocket and, and just these huge, like, resources of information you could have. And so what I love, there is an app called simply enough Shakespeare, and it has the complete works of Shakespeare in your pocket, which as someone who studied a lot of Shakespeare in school and has always enjoyed, uh, Shakespearean plays, I'm not gonna say I've read a lot of plays, Shakespeare plays on my phone, but the idea of having them all in there easily to search and and scroll through is just delightful to me. I mean, I imagine if Shakespeare were here today and he was like, ah, does anyone remember my plays? You could like pull out an iPhone and be like, what sorcery is this? He's like, well, but it's got all your plays on it. Um, you know, that is just sort of the basic aspect. There's a ton of other stuff they've added over the years in terms of like, uh, lexicons and modern translations of these things that you can get if you, you want to pay for the pro version. But the basic version still just has the Shakespeare app and lets you search through stuff and lets you scroll through and like pick all the plays. It's got the sonnets, it's got some of the other stuff.

Dan Moren [00:27:14]:
You can customize your reading experience. Um, you know, it's got like Lincoln's Shakespeare festivals around the world. I, I was amazed to see that it was still, still going after all these many years. Um, and I'm, I'm really impressed that it's still there. And again, I'm just— it's lovely to have the entire works of Shakespeare at your fingertips at any moment because there's always a perfect Shakespeare quote for any situation, really.

Rosemary Orchard [00:27:40]:
Well, the course of true love never did run smooth, and that is of course a very true story when it comes to all of these apps. Uh, but that being said, well, that ends well, Rosemary. Well, that's very true. However, we're not yet at the end of the show. We have another message from Micah. All right, so we do have some news today as we record this episode, which is iOS 27 is out and iOS 26 26.7 is also out and they fix over 100 security bugs. So this is a little appeal to folks, please, uh, you folks who are watching or listening to the show, you have probably already upgraded your devices. Most likely you're running iOS 27, but please make sure your friends and family, even if they're not ready to go to iOS 27 yet, please make sure they've installed the updates for iOS 26.

Rosemary Orchard [00:28:30]:
Security things are nothing to mess with. Now, fingers crossed there's nothing huge in here. We don't, of course, know the full details of everything that gets put in these because Apple keeps it secret so that people haven't upgraded yet, aren't immediately exposed to all the vulnerabilities. But yes, I— please, please, please get people upgrading. Ask your friends, ask your coworkers, ask that random person who you see every day on the bus to work, who you see using their iPhone in a really, really old case. Like, hey, have you upgraded your operating system? Okay, maybe don't be quite that creepy, but do try to get them.

Dan Moren [00:29:03]:
Are you friends? Are you going door to door with Bibles? Hello, have you upgraded your iPhone today?

Rosemary Orchard [00:29:10]:
Was that a vague attempt at an Irish accent there, Dan?

Dan Moren [00:29:13]:
No, not really. I should not in any way do any sort of accent on any program ever.

Rosemary Orchard [00:29:18]:
Well, you know, I'm sure everybody in Ireland would also like you to upgrade your iPhone. Maybe that's because Apple are using it for tax purposes. But either way, if you can please try to get everybody to upgrade, there are so many things that are happening in that, that, you know, it's worth it. But, you know, speaking of things that are happening, Apple reached a humongous milestone. It took them until 2026. They didn't quite manage it in 10 years, but Apple have released more than 1,000 Apple Watch bands, which, you know, that's nearly 100 a year. That's a lot of Apple Watch bands.

Dan Moren [00:29:56]:
They're all in my top drawer somewhere. I can't find them.

Rosemary Orchard [00:30:00]:
But that's because they're all in one drawer, Dan. You need much bigger drawers, obviously.

Dan Moren [00:30:03]:
I don't have any.

Rosemary Orchard [00:30:04]:
No. Yes, I have to admit, I'm wearing a third-party Apple Watch band at the moment, and most of my Apple Watch bands aren't from Apple. But every so often my dad will see a color or my mom will see a color and be like, oh, I really like this, and they will add it to their wish list, at which point I go out and I immediately buy it for them and tuck it away in a drawer or box until the next gift-giving event rolls around. I give it to them because, for example, somebody the other day I saw was asking where they can get an ocean Apple Watch band. I regret to inform you folks that these things are now seasonal. So, and that means whatever Apple decides the season is for the watch band rather than it being like Christmas watch bands. So it, you know, it's out for however long it is and then they release a new wave and the old ones kind of just disappear. Fashion.

Rosemary Orchard [00:30:50]:
So I did, yeah, exactly. It's a fashion season rather than a holiday season. So yes, if there is a color you are interested in, folks, I recommend snapping it up as soon as you can. I found personally the original Apple Watch bands, the fluoroelastomer ones do tend to wear better than the third-party ones, which have tendency to peel and go a little shiny faster. But, uh, yeah, it depends on what you want. But yeah, there's over 1,000 of them out now. So, uh, yeah, there's a really cool website called, uh, sorry, an app called Bandbreite, which means the bandwidth literally in German, um, for tracking all of the Apple Watch bands. So if you want to do the Pokédex and you've got to get them all, uh, you're probably going to struggle, but you never know.

Rosemary Orchard [00:31:32]:
There's quite a few out there now. So we'll see how many people have got among the TWiT audience. Maybe that'll be a question on the TWiT quiz coming up, or the annual, annual quiz. Anyway, on to our last piece of news. So there are 2 iOS 27 features that didn't quite make it out on September 14th. So, you know, we're recording 2 weeks later, but there Suggestions in messages and automatic password changes have both been pushed to a future software update. Now, I have noticed that some of the suggestions and messages for me, at least, Dan, are still hanging around. However, I suspect that's due to the fact that I've been on the beta for the entirety of the summer and things maybe got their wires a little bit crossed there.

Dan Moren [00:32:25]:
Yeah, I, I, it's disappeared for me. I am, I feel like I feel like it worked when I used it during the beta period, but my, like, my biggest sort of feeling with it is it also was very aggressive about wanting to put little buttons in places that like, you're like, this is not helpful. Like my wife texted one day when she picked up our son and it's like, uh, the ice cream truck, they know to be outside the school at 5:30. And it's like, 5:30, add a calendar appointment. It's like, no, I don't need a calendar appointment to tell me the ice cream truck is outside the school. It's already there.

Rosemary Orchard [00:32:55]:
Yes. Yeah, no, I, I get that. I did accidentally add things to Notes more than once because I was like trying to scroll up and mistapped on the screen in the wrong place and accidentally like double tapped, like one tap to stop and then sort of like managed to tap the Add to Notes again. I feel like this might be a better feature if you can have a little bit more fine-grained control over it. Like personally, I don't use Notes, so Add to Notes is not a feature I really want surfaced. Add to Reminders, Add to Calendar, that I'm very much on board with. Add to All. OmniFocus, add to drafts.

Rosemary Orchard [00:33:27]:
I'd love to see those as options coming in with, uh, you know, shortcut support, but we'll see what happens there. Um, but the other one is automatically fixing your passwords. So the idea being the Passwords app can say, hey, uh, this website was compromised, you should go in and update your password, which is, you know, websites have a process for, for dealing with this. And there's various systems out there that can notify you of this, uh, including Have I Been Pwned? Uh, that's PWNED. W-N-E-D. I can't remember. But if you Google it, yeah, if you Google it, you'll find it because they often get a handle on all the credential leaks, as it were. But the Passwords app, in theory, was getting the ability to say, hey, this has been compromised.

Rosemary Orchard [00:34:12]:
Would you like to update it? And you tap yes. And it just did it for you in the background.

Dan Moren [00:34:17]:
It had mixed results in the beta. Like it identified a bunch and then it only fixed a small fraction. And I think it's, it's a, it's a difficult, it's a difficult feat. It's really clever and I really like that they're doing it, but it is, you can see why sometimes it doesn't quite work as it should.

Rosemary Orchard [00:34:32]:
Oh yeah. The number of times that one of these like password reset pages has got the prove I am a human checkbox on there or in front of it is, yeah. And there isn't necessarily a specific API, that's application programming interface, that passwords can hook into to go, hey, I'm an app doing this on behalf of a user and I have been preauthorized by the human. to do this. Uh, but also, I promise you, pinky, pinky swear, fingers crossed, I'm definitely, uh, actually doing this for a human. I'm not actually a robot, but I am a robot doing it for a human. Like, it's, it's a whole kettle of fish. So I, I'm not surprised that this is going to take a little bit longer to get right.

Rosemary Orchard [00:35:11]:
But also, I'd much rather they do this and get it right than release it and then people start tapping to change passwords and then they can't log in anymore and have to go through the whole password reset dance. Trumps and all of that nonsense. Yes. So that was the news. And now we are coming to the end of the show, which means it's time for App Caps or hardware picks that have made our recent history life better. Dan, would you like to go first?

Dan Moren [00:35:40]:
I would. I finally joined the legion of people who knew what I, I guess, didn't know, which is it can be very handy to label things. I bought a label maker. I was trying to organize. I've moved offices in my house. And so I was, I had all like this terrible, like 3-drawer plastic thing that was just all my cables shoved into it. And I didn't know where every time I got a new cable with a device, shove it in a drawer. And I was like, I am dreading cleaning this out, but I bit the bullet.

Dan Moren [00:36:10]:
I did it. I cleaned out all of it and I organized it. And I bought one of those, like, um, it's like a little chest of drawers, like the, you know, for crafting or hard or like you know, woodworking or whatever, where it's got little like small drawers. And in addition to that, I bought a label maker. This is the—

Rosemary Orchard [00:36:25]:
Yeah.

Dan Moren [00:36:27]:
Nelco P21 label maker. Why did I buy it? It's super cheap, but I think it cost me like $20 or less, but it works pretty well. Like, as long as kind of what you're trying to do was what I was trying to do, which was make a little like precut label and just slap it on a drawer so you know what's in there. It's got an app that you do all the stuff through that like lets you design it, different fonts or little borders or whatever. And I enjoy that it has like a little, um, because it just prints on a tape, it's got like a little cutter at the end where you just like move it up and it like slices off the label and then you just, you know, peel 'em off and stick 'em wherever you want. Like, honestly, you know, is it the most advanced label maker? No, there's tons of great label makers out there, but I wanted, before I like was like, I'm gonna buy $100 worth of label maker that I will never use. I was like, well, I'll buy a cheap one, see if I use it first, see if I have any problems with it. And if I need more than that, I'll get more than that.

Dan Moren [00:37:21]:
But right now it has served me very well. Um, and so I really appreciate just how simple and easy it is. Like you just pop a, like a roll of tape in there, it lines it up for you and everything. And, and yeah, I was impressed with how good the app is. So if you're looking to get like, get in, dip your toe in label makers without, you know, like investing a lot of money, I can recommend the Nelco P21.

Rosemary Orchard [00:37:46]:
Excellent. I mean, that sounds like a great choice for a first label maker. Uh, have you labeled the label maker yet, Dan?

Dan Moren [00:37:52]:
Hmm, no, but I guess—

Rosemary Orchard [00:37:55]:
Okay, so I will admit I have labeled my label makers. Uh, it doesn't just say label maker on there. Okay, it tells me— it's not you, so it tells tells me what the label maker shows up as, like, and also if it's Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and which app. Um, and the reason for this is I have a collection of label makers. I don't know what the correct collective noun for label makers is, but if anybody wants a recommendation for a specific kind of label printer—

Dan Moren [00:38:21]:
A ream of label makers.

Rosemary Orchard [00:38:23]:
Oh, a ream of label makers. I have a small collection, one might say. They all get used genuinely for different purposes. So, uh, yes. However, my picked Today is not a label maker; it's a cable because the way that I connect my iPhone to my Mac for for iOS today, and I also connect other devices to my Mac, is a cable connected to my studio display. However, I don't know about you, Dan. Having a two-meter cable hanging off of my studio display for when I need it—it gets messy, right? So I went retractable, and specifically, I got this Ugreen one. 100-watt retractable cable which expands to— I think it's just over a meter, it's 1.2 meters long.

Rosemary Orchard [00:39:07]:
Uh, but this is buttery smooth. It does up to 100 watts of power transfer, which is great for that. Um, it's USB-C to USB-C Power Delivery retractable cable. It is not telling me on the back of here what the transfer speed for things is, uh, but you know, the fact that it can do 100 watts is great. I actually— oh, this is not the first one of these I own. I own a silver one with a black cable that lives in my car. Because that way, my phone usually sits on a MagSafe cooling charger in my car. So that's not a problem.

Rosemary Orchard [00:39:37]:
But if there's somebody else in my car, and they need to charge their phone, I can say, here's a cable, but it's not hanging around dangling into the passenger footwell, getting in people's way all the time getting stood on, because that's how things get broken. It tidies itself up. So I'm currently in the process, we have like a 3-meter cable on the sofa and a couple of other cables. I'm currently in the process of replacing all of the cables around the house with retractable cables that aren't for things that are just permanently plugged in. If something's permanently plugged in and there's a specific cable, a particular length for it that works, that's great. But any cables where people are plugging and unplugging devices, I'm currently in the process of replacing them with retractable cables. I have previously used magnetic cables in the past, which have got like a magnetic fiber in the braiding, but I find that this, like, it's working really well at the moment because it's been coiled up for ages. But I find that after a while, sometimes these don't tend to do very well.

Rosemary Orchard [00:40:32]:
And also these can be kind of slow, especially for data transfer if you're trying to transfer a lot of data at once. So yeah, this is the Ugreen 100-watt USB-C retractable and fast charging ready cable. That's, that's what they call it on their website. I believe this retails for $16, but you can often get them cheaper from Amazon. Speaking of which, folks, there is an Amazon Prime Day coming up. Uh, please check the prices of anything you're interested in purchasing before Amazon Prime Day. Take a screenshot of it, save it somewhere that you will check it, and don't get sucked into deals that aren't actually deals on Amazon Prime Day. But also, if you spot a really good deal on something, then go for it.

Rosemary Orchard [00:41:09]:
Especially Anker, Ugreen, all of those companies tend to have sales. So just, uh, keep an eye out. Maybe you'll get something really good. Anyway, that is it for episode 822 of iOS Today. Dan, thank you for being a wonderful guest. Please, can you tell our lovely audience where they can find you?

Dan Moren [00:41:28]:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Uh, I write about Apple-related stuff over at sixcolors.com. You can catch me on my podcast, which includes The Rebound and Every Week with Micah over at Relay.fm. It is Clockwise. Uh, and I'm also an author of science fiction books. I've got one coming out in November called Eternities Tomb, which if you're on video is behind me here-ish. Um, and, uh, you can pre-order that and find all copies and links to my other books at demoran.com.

Rosemary Orchard [00:41:58]:
Thank you very much. And folks, you can find me over at rosemaryorchard.com, which has got links to apps, books, podcasts that I am or have been involved in, plus all my social media with the exception of the Club Twit Discord, because of course you can find me there during— in the live chat during the show trying to keep an eye on what everybody's talking about. Everyone thinks that I need to label this cable, they might not be wrong that it does have a label on it already. So maybe I should label the cable. And of course, there's also a fabulous iOS Today forum where people can discuss the episodes after they release. And of course, you can also submit any questions that you have for Shortcuts Corner or feedback either in Discord, in the iOS Today forum, or to ios today at twitter. iOS Today That's it for today, folks. Thank you very much and goodbye.